The Cost of Queues – Informed Decision Making Using Cost of Delay

Don Reinertsen says that if you only quantify one thing, quantify the Cost of Delay. By quantifying the Cost of Delay we are providing ourselves with a common currency for improving how we prioritise and schedule our work. We are also providing ourselves with a tool for understanding the economic damage done by the queues in our development process. In the first part of the workshop we will introduce you to Cost of Delay using a simple economic framework which will allow you to surface assumptions about value. We will then look at various urgency profiles to understand how the value of the work will decay over time, which in turn will enable you to make transparent prioritisation decisions. In the second part of the workshop we will look at how queues are damaging your organisation and how Cost of Delay can help you put a price on those queues, and guide decisions on how to improve flow.